用开普勒探测奥尔特云天体的可探测性
Detectability of Oort cloud objects using Kepler
摘要：
奥尔特云中天体的大小分布和总质量对行星形成理论有重要意义，包括早期太阳系的性质和过程。我们讨论了空间任务的潜力，如开普勒和CoRoT，旨在发现凌日系外行星，探测奥尔特云，柯伊伯带和主要带对象的掩星的背景。依靠发表的动态估计的内容的奥尔特云，我们发现开普勒的主要计划预计将检测0和~100掩星事件的数十公里大小的奥尔特云对象。掩星率取决于奥尔特云的质量、到其“内缘”的距离以及其天体的大小分布。相比之下，开普勒不太可能发现柯伊伯带或主带小行星的掩星，主要是因为它正在观测一个高黄道纬度场。太阳系天体的掩星在一次测量中会表现为光度偏差，这意味着关于每次事件的时间尺度和光变曲线形状的信息丢失了。我们提出的统计方法，有可能验证的真实性掩星事件的太阳系对象，估计距离的掩星人口，并限制其大小分布。我们的研究结果对于规划未来的天基系外行星搜索是有用的，这种搜索方式将最大限度地提高探测太阳系天体的概率，而不会妨碍主要的科学目标。
英文摘要：
The size distribution and total mass of objects in the Oort Cloud have important implications to the theory of planets formation, including the properties of, and the processes taking place in the early solar system. We discuss the potential of space missions like Kepler and CoRoT, designed to discover transiting exo-planets, to detect Oort Cloud, Kuiper Belt and main belt objects by occultations of background stars. Relying on published dynamical estimates of the content of the Oort Cloud, we find that Kepler's main program is expected to detect between 0 and ~100 occultation events by deca-kilometer-sized Oort Cloud objects. The occultations rate depends on the mass of the Oort cloud, the distance to its "inner edge", and the size distribution of its objects. In contrast, Kepler is unlikely to find occultations by Kuiper Belt or main belt asteroids, mainly due to the fact that it is observing a high ecliptic latitude field. Occultations by Solar System objects will appear as a photometric deviation in a single measurement, implying that the information regarding the time scale and light-curve shape of each event is lost. We present statistical methods that have the potential to verify the authenticity of occultation events by Solar System objects, to estimate the distance to the occulting population, and to constrain their size distribution. Our results are useful for planning of future space-based exo-planet searches in a way that will maximize the probability of detecting solar system objects, without hampering the main science goals.
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